Philip Reeve - A Darkling Plain

She almost screamed when a silhouette rose up in the path ahead, but it was just Ron Hodge, the rest of his patrol behind him.

“What’s going on?” asked Cat.

“Intruder,” said Ron shakily. “We got a glimpse of him, then lost him. He’s around here somewhere.”

“Just the one?”

“Don’t know.”

Cat took charge, ordering everybody to fan out and search. They called to each other as they crept through the spires and angles of the wreck, and they used words now as well as bird sounds; sometimes just the sound of voices emerging from the dead scrap piles was enough to make intruders turn tail and run.

There was no sign of anyone.

“What’s that?” yelped Timex. Wren ran to him, scrambling through drifts of rust flakes as crunchy as breakfast cereal. “There!” he hissed as she reached him, and she saw it too, just for an instant, a movement between two nearby blocks of wreckage. She tried to call out for Cat and the others, but her mouth was too dry. She fumbled for the safety catch of her crossbow, telling herself that if the stranger was one of Wolf’s men from Harrowbarrow, she would have to kill him before he killed her.

“Who’s there?” shouted a voice. A familiar accent; Theo’s accent. It made Wren feel shivery with relief. This wasn’t an attacker; just some lost African airman, another deserter from the retreating Green Storm armies that the lookouts had sighted passing by. Cat had said that half a dozen had stumbled into the fringes of the debris field over the past few days, and it had been easy enough to frighten them away. Wren wondered what would be the best way to convince this one that the wreck was full of restless spirits. Should she leap out waving her arms and going “Woooooo”?

Just then, a lot of things happened at once. The stranger, who was closer than he had sounded, appeared suddenly around the corner of an old engine block. Cat and Angie, coming over the crest of the wreckage behind him, unveiled their lanterns, the dazzling ghost lights that had driven off so many previous interlopers. The stranger, alarmed, ran straight toward Wren and Timex, and Timex barged backward, crashing into Wren, whose crossbow went off accidentally with a startling twang and a kick that nearly broke her arm. The stranger fell in the splay of light from the lanterns, and Wren, catching sight of his face, saw that he did not just sound like Theo, he was Theo.

“Ow!” he said weakly.

There was a sound of slithering rust flakes as the other Londoners came running. Wren stood shaking her head, rubbing her wrenched arm, waiting to wake up. This was a dream, and a pretty poor one. Theo could not be here. Theo was in Zagwa. That was not Theo, lying there dying on the metal in front of her.

But when she edged closer, and Cat held up her lantern, there was no mistaking his good, handsome, dark-brown face.

“Theo?” she said. “I didn’t mean to— Oh, Quirke!” She started to claw at his soggy coat, looking for the crossbow bolt.

Ron Hodge arrived, keen to assert himself now that the intruder had turned out harmless. “Leave him, Wren,” he ordered.

“Oh, go away!” yelled Wren. “He’s a friend! And I think I’ve shot him…”

But there was no hole in Theo’s coat; no blood, no jutting bolt. Her shot had gone wide. “I just slipped,” Theo said weakly, looking at Wren as if he did not believe it could really be her. He half sat up and stared warily at the young Londoners crowding around him. Wren couldn’t take her eyes off him. How thin and pained and tired he looked, and how glad she was to see him!

Theo tried out a smile. “I got your letter,” he said.

They made their way back to their camp, where Angie lit a small fire and heated up some soup for Theo, who was shivering with cold and exhaustion. Wren sat by him as he drank it. It felt strange to be with him again. She had been imagining him safe in sunny Zagwa. How did he come to be caught up in the Green Storm’s defeats? She had asked, but he’d just said, “It’s complicated,” and she hadn’t liked to press him.

She wondered if he still remembered kissing her at Kom Ombo Air Harbor, and supposed that he must; he had come all the way to London to find her, after all.

“We shouldn’t be mollycoddling him,” said Ron Hodge grumpily, pacing about at the edge of the firelight. “He’s Green Storm.”

“He’s not!” cried Wren.

“He’s in a Green Storm uniform.”

“Only the coat,” said Theo, lifting it open to show his flyer’s clothes beneath. “I stole it from a dead man on the way east. I’m not Green Storm. I don’t know what I am.”

“He’s a Zagwan,” said one of Ron’s group. “Zagwans are Anti-Tractionists. We can’t let an Anti-Tractionist into London. Wren and her dad have already brought one spy among us; now she’s asking us to take in a Mossie…”

“So what do you think we should do with him?” asked Cat Luperini. “Kill him?”

The boys looked sheepish.

“When daylight comes, me and Wren will take him over to Crouch End,” Cat decided.

Wren slept fitfully, curled up beside Theo. The wreckage made an uncomfortable bed, but even without the rivets and rust flakes digging into her, she could not have slept; she had to keep studying his sleeping face to make quite sure she had not dreamed him. And then she suddenly woke to daylight, and it was time to leave.

They walked eastward, Wren and Theo together, Cat following with her crossbow. As they went, Theo told Wren his story, and she learned how he had met her mother, and how they had traveled together all the way to the Green Storm’s lines.

“And after that?” asked Wren.

“I don’t know. I think she’s safe. Probably in Shan Guo by now.”

Wren was not sure what to feel. She’d grown used to thinking that Mum was dead. It was unsettling to find out that she was still alive, and to hear the way Theo spoke of her, as if he admired her. And that she should be traveling around with that horrible Stalker, Mr. Grike—Wren didn’t like to think about it, and she was almost relieved when Cat suddenly shouted, “Down!” and she was able to concentrate on dragging Theo off the path and into cover.

A Stalker-bird coasted low over the ruins, so close that Wren heard the sound of its wing feathers combing the air. Its too-big head swung mechanically from side to side.

Cat scrambled over to join Wren and Theo. “I saw it circling up high when we left the camp,” she said. “I’ve been keeping my eye on it while you two nattered. I hoped it would go on its way, but it’s watching us. Must have seen that fire we lit last night.”

Wren peeked out from under the slab of deck plate that hid them. The bird had gone higher, circling. As Wren watched, it flapped its raggedy wings and swooped off across the debris fields in the direction of Crouch End.

“They’re definitely getting nosier,” said Cat.

“Spy birds,” said Wren to Theo, thinking he looked scared. “They come over and take pictures of us for General Naga’s album.”

Theo shook his head. “That wasn’t a spy bird, Wren. That was a Lammergeyer. We had a flock of them aboard my carrier when I was with the Storm. They’re used for armed reconnaissance.” The girls looked blankly at him, as girls so often did when he slipped into the Storm’s military jargon. “They’re attack birds, Wren! I think your friends are in danger…”

The Green Storm’s birds were certainly taking a great interest in the debris fields that morning. As Tom worked away wrapping and packing the treasures he had found among the ruins ready for their transfer aboard New London, he kept hearing the clang clang clang of the danger bell, warning any Londoner who was out in the open to beware. By lunchtime the still-smoldering carcasses of three more spy birds were hanging outside the canteen, displayed as trophies by the keen lookouts who had shot them down with lightning guns when they showed too much interest in the Womb.